‘Nurturing Glass’ is a carefully crafted project, part of an ongoing exploration of the topic ‘Safe Space’. A term I have come to define as “A space or state of being in which you can feel safe to be yourself and to heal yourself”. To reach this concept, I introduce small interventions that will aid in doing so.

The study into Safe Space exists of many facets, the loam and stained-glass work, ‘Nurturing Glass’, focuses on the aspect of material, color and light. The intimate work has been developed alongside extensive research and has been attentively crafted with the gentle touch of my own hands, accompanied by the hands of my loved ones. With the work I pose the question “Can the effect color has on your state of mind, be used to better it?” and warmly invite the audience to experience the effect of color for themselves.

Glass, Wood, Led/Tin, Loam, Fabric. 2022. Rotterdam.

My graduation work has been one I thoroughly enjoyed working on and, for months, have poured my heart into. In recent years I developed an overlapping theme in my work: a large study into Safe Space. A space, or state of being, in which one can feel safe to be themselves and to heal themselves. The topic originated from a place of isolation, one that I have been confined to from periods in my life due to an unregulated case of Diabetes. I shifted my approach to the topic from the confrontational approach a lot of artworks seem to have these days: one that confronts an audience with a problem, without granting aftercare. To a new, more welcoming approach, where I invite audience members to experience different aspects of the broad topic of Safe Space. Giving them the freedom and autonomy to see what resonates with them, and perhaps what can aid them in daily life. My works aim to introduce different possibilities of (small) interventions that can aid in reaching that concept of Safe Space, within the reality that we have been given.

The aspects of Safe Space to be explored are bountiful, and each of these aspects ask for a different approach. For the project Nurturing Glass, I focused on researching the question: “Can the effect color has on your state of mind, be used to better it?”. This part of the research delves into four different sub-question: “How Do You Perceive Color?”, “How Is Color Perceived Historically and Culturally?”, “How Does Color Influence Our Individual State of Mind?” and “How Will I Apply the Influence Color Has on Your State of Mind, in My Art Practice?”. If you are interested in the research, feel free to contact LinnD@outlook.com.

The project Nurturing Glass is an intimate project, each material, each detail has had my consideration. It started out as something I thought I had to develop on my own, which is how I have worked in the past. However, during the process I realized that the work is meant to be a gift to you, my viewer, my audience. An invitation. I wanted every part of the process to be one that was thoughtful, one that was an act of love and care. The materials and techniques used are extremely labor intensive, deceptively so. Over the past few months I have spent countless (close to a thousand hours) hours intimately working with every single aspect that was part of the work. The fabrics, the pillows, cutting the glass, foiling the glass, soldering, waxing and patina-ing the glass, sawing all the wood, plaster boarding them, plastering them with base loam, plastering them with loam finish, everything down to the business card holder has had my full attention and consideration.

I invited my loved ones to be part of the process, together we would step into the making process of the work. We engaged in beautiful conversations during the process; something about working with your hands seems to allow the mind to slip into exactly what I aim to create: Safe Space, we sat in comfortable silence and shared the calm experience of care. An experience that can be felt again by the audience, within the loam and stained-glass walls of Nurturing Glass.